J. T. English | How to Deepen Discipleship in Your Church | Gospel Bound

What ails your church? Hopefully the answer doesn’t come too quickly! Hopefully your church is the picture of health, where everyone’s growing in love of God and love of neighbor.
Or maybe your church has a discipleship disease. If so, then JT English can help with his new book, Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus, published by B&H. English serves as the lead pastor of Storyline Fellowship in Arvada, Colorado. Previously, JT served as a pastor at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, where he founded and directed The Village Church Institute, which is committed to theological education in the local church
JT sees churches worried about being irrelevant, worried they’re asking too much of busy people. Many Christians seem to think the church has gotten too deep. But JT English couldn’t disagree more! As you might guess from his book title, he says most churches aren’t nearly deep enough. He writes: People are leaving not because we have given them too much but because we have given them far too little. They are leaving the church because we have not given them any reason to stay. We are treating the symptoms of the wrong disease. Deep discipleship is about giving people more Bible, not less; more theology, not less; more spiritual disciplines, not less; more gospel, not less; more Christ, not less.
The good news is that deep discipleship does not require massive resources, a large congregation, or an enormous ministry staff. It starts with not apologizing when we ask Christians to make commitments. JT joins me now on Gospelbound to discuss Sunday school and small groups, travel baseball, active learning, and commissioning culture.

[@Apriluser]

Wonderful conversation! My husband and I journeyed from the evangelical world where we had been in ministry for several decades, to the Anglican Church (ACNA). There we found a “rule of life” in the Daily Office (prayer 4 times a day and lots of Scripture), walking Christ’s life thru the Church Year, the nourishment of weekly Eucharist, etc. We wish we would have found this way of doing discipleship 30 years ago!

[@samiemmanuelschroeder-taba8518]

Thank you. Great listen. Disciples discipling disciples. The Gospel in action.

[@RafielAlgoDiferente]

Amazing interview make me laugh, tear up and it also was really encouraging. God bless you guys.

[@deshaunhill7934]

Amen

[@Apriluser]

JT raised Calvin’s name several times. Calvin was just one voice in the Reformation. Be well-read. Evangelicals are a small group within the larger Church. Learn about the Roman and Orthodox Churches. And read church history from the Early Church to the present. Don’t skip the Medieval period and leapfrog to the Reformers. The Spirit was working all along.

[@jamesirvin7799]

Rittenhouse deserves an apology.

[@MrKappaKappaPsi]

So does lt. Michael Byrd.